Is "skipping/guessing" an option for +720 plus?

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If you are looking to get a top score of 720+, can you really afford to merely guess at a question if you don't know the answer? Let me be more specific: many say that if you do not have a good feel for a question 60 seconds or so into the question, you should probably start looking at strategic guesses as opposed to spending 3-4 mins on the problem. Is this really a good strategy though for someone who could spend 3-4 mins on the question and then very possibly get it right? Of course you may be giving up precious time by using 3-4 min to "maybe" get the question right, as opposed to giving it a good guess and continue on to other questions.

If you run into say 4 quant questions throughout a test where you are stuck, should you quickly "guess" to assure you reach all questions and answer the remaing 31 correctly, or spend a bit more time on the 4 and hope to really nail them all? I guess what I'm asking is if the margin of error is so slim that 4 wrong will kill your score, or if you can afford to get 4 hard questions wrong and get all 31 others right and still get +720?

Hopefully this isn't too convoluted of a question...Thanks
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by Ashley@VeritasPrep » Thu Jul 07, 2011 8:10 pm
My take on this: I do think in all probability you will cause yourself far more harm than gain by spending 4 minutes on (as in your scenario) each of 4 questions. That'd take up 16 of your 75 minutes, leaving you with only 59 minutes to devote to your other 33 questions -- and at that point any question you spend more than about 1 minute and 45 seconds on will drive you further behind. Also remember that you have a one in five chance of getting any given question RIGHT just by pure guessing, so the most likely outcome if you guess on 4 questions is that you'll get exactly one of them right. (There, see, you've already knocked it down to 3 wrong :).)

Of course, you should TOTALLY spend 3-4 minutes on problems you think you could get right given the extra time IF -- and ONLY if -- you otherwise tend to run way ahead on time. As long as you've got time to spare, go ahead and use it. But otherwise, you'll probably wind up putting yourself sufficiently behind by dawdling on those 4 questions that you'll wind up just having to guess on 4 questions at the end! And in that case, it would certainly have been better in retrospect to guess on the ones you were shakier on from earlier than to guess on these random 4 end questions that might otherwise be totally within your ability to do quickly.
Ashley Newman-Owens
GMAT Instructor
Veritas Prep

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